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Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

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Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#71

Post by marcinzm »

yrgulation wrote: post #62
marcinzm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly paid as a developer means you're making $400k+ with less than 10 years under your belt. Those people don't generally live with roommates unless they're aiming for aggressive FIRE.

One should factor in taxes, vesting times and what % is actually yours of those shares. Two websites i quickly used for calculating take home pay showed 8000-9000 usd per month. I may be wrong but it would seem like that’s rather low. I know people in east europe making almost that after tax on a way lower salary / daily rate.

The take home in California would be $20k+ per month. Income tax for a single person would be 40% and if married it'd be 32%. That's not counting any deductions you could do or $401k match.

edit: The comp is also not counting stock appreciation which historically was a lot. If you joined Apple in 2019 with a $200k in annual RSUs over 4 years then this year you'd be making $800k from those RSUs. So likely over a million in total tax reportable income.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#72

Post by yrgulation »

coffee_beqn wrote: post #69
yrgulation wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Issue in denmark is that high pay gets heavily taxed. So 102k is what 50k at best? Factor in vat and its less.

True but you also get more “free” services for your tax payments - especially if you have kids.

Like anywhere in europe, and if you want quality or quick service you go private.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#73

Post by yrgulation »

silvestrov wrote: post #70
yrgulation wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Issue in denmark is that high pay gets heavily taxed. So 102k is what 50k at best? Factor in vat and its less.

So very wrong. $102k/year = DKK 759288/year = DKK 63274/month. Typing 63274 into https://hvormegetefterskat.dk (howmuchaftertax) says 40.2% tax rate. The you have to factor in $0 in health costs (gratis hospital and doctor visits), no payments for kids attending university, 32 weeks of paid maternal leave, and 5 weeks of mandatory holiday each year.

There is no such thing as “free services”. You paid for them through taxes. Also you need to factor in vat and everything else being expensive due to taxes. Dont get me wrong, denmark looks great, but as many “rich” west eu countries the country is rich but the people arent.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#74

Post by IaacForHire »

mrweasel wrote: post #64
yrgulation wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Issue in denmark is that high pay gets heavily taxed. So 102k is what 50k at best? Factor in vat and its less.

Why would that push salaries down? Should they be even higher in that case?

A few years ago a Danish friend of mine said she'd hit a point where it wasn't worth taking a raise because of the progressive taxation system, and so instead she would negotiate for more benefits.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#75

Post by lrvick »

IaacForHire wrote: post #51
yrgulation wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats odd. I know loads of lawyers living in mansions while loads of “highly paid” developers live with housemates, or rent tiny homes. If anything, software development pay has reached construction worker pay. At least we dont have to sit out in the cold.

I have a cousin who makes $220k as a crane operator at a port. I'll never make that much in my career.

Not with that attitude. If you are healthy, have people skills, and are capable of learning new things regularly then you can generally make as much as you want in this industry.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#76

Post by brandall10 »

IaacForHire wrote: post #46
brandall10 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's many companies that compete for FAANG talent and pay that type of comp or come within 15% or so of it. Just peruse levels.fyi

I'm not sure I can believe that. The companies who hire for average senior engineers like me do not compete with FAANG. They hire the 90% of us who aren't rockstars and have accepted we have no upward mobility in our careers. I know very many devops/software engineers in San Francisco making $140k-$150k total comp.

Sure, the vast majority do. But to say that only a small handful of companies pay this is just untrue... it's probably in the high double or even triple digits. Many namebrand non-FAANG (ie. Linked-In, Uber, Snap, Slack) do, and some you might not even think of. One example - OpenDoor, which pays over $400k for a regular senior engineer.

Additionally, it's not uncommon for small NYC fintechs to pay straight cash comp of $350k+ for basic senior fullstack devs.

All these places do the standard FAANG type interviews though. They're all competing for the same talent pool, and typically they're full of ex-FAANG engineers.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#77

Post by yrgulation »

marcinzm wrote: post #71
yrgulation wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One should factor in taxes, vesting times and what % is actually yours of those shares. Two websites i quickly used for calculating take home pay showed 8000-9000 usd per month. I may be wrong but it would seem like that’s rather low. I know people in east europe making almost that after tax on a way lower salary / daily rate.

The take home in California would be $20k+ per month. Income tax for a single person would be 40% and if married it'd be 32%. That's not counting any deductions you could do or $401k match. edit: The comp is also not counting stock appreciation which historically was a lot. If you joined Apple in 2019 with a $200k in annual RSUs over 4 years then this year you'd be making $800k from those RSUs. So likely over a milli…

Interesting, thanks for the clarification. Not had but not as high as it sounds at first sight.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#78

Post by varispeed »

jheriko wrote: post #10
CommanderData wrote: post #9

European permanent salaries have been coming down. UK contractors take home less now than they did 5 years ago due to taxation changes (IR35). The tax changes have also made the market a bit strange where rates are still advertised at £500 a day even though, contractor takes home significantly less money. These have not gone up inline.

* dishonest and ethically corrupt contractors now take home less thanks to IR35. for the rest of us, it was a non-event.

That's what you would think, if you couldn't reason beyond one or two variables.

It has just become more expensive to hire skilled workers that were freelancing. This means the budget for permanent employees had to be culled. So while you laugh out of envy, you will notice that your raise or bonus will not go ahead.

Companies also learn that the changed IR35 lets them decouple themselves from the responsibilities of an employer and they can no longer worry about unions if they move all their employees (except the core ones) to Umbrellas.

The fire and re-hire schemes are getting more common. My friend was terminated this year and was given an opportunity to come back through an agency and an umbrella. Of course a slight pay cut and no more career path within the company he worked at.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#79

Post by IshKebab »

swyx wrote: post #61
gsibble wrote: post #50

Having worked in startups in SF and now Boston for the last 12 years, I first started making my current salary in 2014 and have never made more than that from one job. So in real figures, salaries have come down quite a bit due to inflation. Only real way to make money in tech is FAANG. I've owned so much worthless stock it's basically a meme.

as in, all the non FAANG startup stock you earned became worthless? its actually kind of rare to have that high of a failure rate in startups, particularly by name brand VCs. feel like at worst you get a shitty acquihire but you at least get _something_ for your stock

You probably wouldn't get anything for your stock unless the acquisition price is higher than the price the investors paid though.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#80

Post by ethbr0 »

Silhouette wrote: post #19

A good question to ask might be why salaries should go up significantly. We're lucky enough to work in a very well compensated industry but we're also in a kind of bubble where sometimes the economics are strange. In the good times when VCs are falling over themselves to fund anything that might be the next FAANG there is a huge amount of money pouring into the industry and a lot of hiring going on and none of that i…

The way I see it, there are two fundamental very different but conflated drivers of high tech salaries.

1) Software companies are enormously profitable per employee, because of zero duplication- and low scaling- costs. Consequently, companies with high total customer counts can afford high compensation.

2) New software companies often have extremely high growth, which makes them attractive to capital, which overvalues their shares (relative to other businesses and pre- and post-IPO), which allows them to cheaply (for them) boost compensation.

I'd expect companies in the first bucket to continue paying high salaries (aka MAMAA), but monetary policy has severely cut the second bucket's ability to do so. Consequently, lower salary increase pressure across the board.

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